Foundation (5 page)
They resembled so very much the stills of enemy ships ancient Air Force commanders prompted their pilots with at mission briefings before air attacks in World War II.
Some of the spaceships were as long and tapered as submarines, some were as massive as oil tankers, others as bulky as sports domes, others as sleek and elegant as ocean liners. But there were also a few that were as small as little houses.
Benedict led the applicants to a third window.
Inside another hall, a dozen fresh believers, wearing yellow suits, floated in their training deckchairs, about three feet above the polished floor. This time, the ubiquitous monitors displayed pictures of queer, lush and hulking exoplants, among which a weird barbed palm stood out prominently.
A second instructor glanced at a fan-shaped pad in his hands, checking the synchronization levels of the fresh believers afloat. Though a couple of dots fluttered wildly above and below the fluorescent-green bell of the syncing level, the rest of them crowded along it with commendable precision.
“Before our fresh believers can deal with the largest spaceships,” continued Benedict, “they are required to test their skills on lesser objects.”
He showed the applicants to one last, narrow window.
Beyond a thick security glass, opened an empty, spotless-white hall the dimension of a large hangar. Except for the slit window, every inch of it had been lined with large, square ceramic tiles.
For a minute or so, nothing happened.
Then, all at once, a ripple propagated through the air like a quickly expanding heat wave. Amazingly, one of the barbed exoplants seen in the training room materialized from thin air.
Gnarled and thorny, it was more than twenty feet high. Its roots deprived of the supporting soil, the exoplant crashed loudly to the ceramic floor, sending clods of alien soil all over.
The plant just lay there for a while when, unexpectedly, something dropped from its crown ...
It rolled to the plain tiles of the floor, looking like a round eggplant. But it was no fruit. It uncurled, revealing the black, blinking eyes of a small, dark-blue alien creature resembling a scaled salamander.
There was something disturbing about the way the two gills at either side of its head frantically opened and closed, in the attempt to filter or suck in something that clearly wasn’t air. In moments, it started to squirm and spasm helplessly, choking inexorably ...
Until it noticed the window above, from which the disconcerted applicants were looking. Fighting for life, the creature resorted to its last strength. Clawing at the walls of the hangar, it desperately rushed upward.
To the horror of the onlookers, the creature slithered to level with the corridor window and crawled around the frame like a cockroach trapped in a jar, looking for a way out—but it couldn’t find any.
Almost at the end of its resources as well as of its wits, the only thing the creature could think of was to slam its head into the thick glass. It tried once again, harder this time, but it almost knocked itself out.
Unable to figure out what that place was, wondering where the comfortable world that used to be home had gone, the stunned alien glowered at the humans.
Ever so slowly, the gills stopped pumping and never moved again. The creature had died with its eyes open.
As if the pitiful sight had triggered a hidden switch in the test room circuitry, flames erupted from the ceiling, inundating the hangar below, mercifully obliterating both the exoplant and the alien creature.
Benedict looked up at the shocked applicants. He could sense the many unanswered questions that flooded their minds. Was the horrible death of the little, scaled salamander an unpredictable mistake? Or was it a deliberate show of the overwhelming powers that lay behind Credence?
“The test required for the fresh believers to flush the Arcturian Palm alone. Not the small critters that live on it,” he said. “I’m afraid they’ll have to try again.”
More concerned about the poor performance of his believers than the critter’s demise, he sighed.
“The people who depend on Credence and our services depend in first place on our believers’ total devotion and dedication,” he said. “It is the responsibility of the believers, of their instructors as well as mine that no errors are made in the production of the Main Belief. As I told you, it’s hard, long work, but being a believer is no ordinary job. More than a mission, it’s a call. Don’t ever forget that.”
Nobody said anything. The applicants were still shaken by what they had just witnessed.
Benedict wondered who among them was going to become a believer. In the last five years, he had seen as many as ten thousand of them. He thought he had developed an eye for spotting them. It wasn’t anything scientific, of course, and he knew it was a little foolish thing to do. However, his job didn’t allow for many distractions or amusements, so he gave it a try.
There were three who looked very promising.
The first was a straw-blond haired, ruddy youngster of about twenty-five. He had a straight nose, broad cheekbones and strong shoulders. Even if he tried to be casual about it, he couldn’t quite hide the thick farmworker arms that bulged under a Syntex shirt engineered to look like rough, worn-out jeans fabric.
Benedict was positive that behind the almost dumb look of the young man, a quick, inquisitive brain was to be found. He was sure the man had listened to him very carefully and that he had understood every single word of what he had said. A good competitor.
Seemingly, there was another who hadn’t missed a word of Benedict’s introductory speech. She was a pale and thin woman of about twenty, had long red hair, a pointy nose and a small chin. Her cold, emerald eyes kept moving around, losing nothing of what she saw; another interesting subject.
The third contender was also a young woman. She had jet-black hair woven in long, tight braids pulled up in a bun on the top of her head. She had black opals for eyes, the lean body of an athlete and full, lovely lips. She hadn’t stopped taking notes in her electronic pad for the whole length of Benedict’s speech, except for once, when the fire had engulfed the test room.
“There’s another promising subject,” thought Benedict. It wasn’t just his nose for spotting believers, something else had convinced him.
When the applicants had witnessed the accidental death of the alien creature—the little, helpless scaled salamander—all three had looked straight in Benedict’s eyes. They blamed him for what had happened.
That wasn’t a bad sign at all. On the contrary. A good believer must value life beyond anything else. The more he valued life, the more his belief would be focused, the lesser the chance he made errors in creating the Main Belief.
Benedict allowed his mouth to curl into a little, self-satisfied smile. Yes, those three were going to do very good as believers ...
He snapped out of his personal considerations, extending his arm toward a stern-looking woman of about forty in lab overalls who had suddenly appeared to Benedict’s right.
“Mrs. Matthews will pick up from here,” he said. “She will lead you through the next steps. Good luck to all of you and welcome to Credence ...”
He moved aside, letting Matthews step forth and take charge of the applicants.
“I’m Stephanie Matthews,” said the woman in a crisp and brisk tone of voice. “I’m responsible for the preliminary selection of the applicants. If you have questions about how we choose believers or about how points are assigned at every stage of the interview, just let me know. We will now evaluate your primary attitude for believing. Please follow me.”
Matthews herded the applicants down the corridor. They soon disappeared in one of the many rooms of Credence.
Only Benedict stood in the now-empty corridor—and a previously unseen Trumaine ...
Benedict didn’t remember having any appointments today, and it wasn’t like him to forget something. He studied Trumaine with a slight frown.
“You’re not here to apply, are you?” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
“Detective Investigator Trumaine,” said Trumaine, showing his blue badge.
Benedict shot a quick glance at the plastic card, then looked up again and smiled vaguely.
“I’m Noah Benedict, chief of board and main responsible for the federal institution that is Credence. How may I help you, Detective?”
“This morning, Aarmo Jarva was found dead in his bunker house,” said Trumaine. “It was in the lunchtime news.”
“So I’ve heard. It is a great loss for the scientific community as well as for mankind.”
“Did you happen to know Professor Jarva, Mr. Benedict?”
“I must say that I knew him quite well. For a brief season in the past, he had access to Credence. He was allowed to collect data about anything he wanted, including our believers. Mostly, it was a professional relationship. Without a doubt, a very inspiring and profitable experience, I should add. He was an exquisite man to know. At least he was to me. I regret that he’s dead ...”
Trumaine, intrigued by the answer, wondered if he could be on a hot trail already.
“When was the last time you saw him?” he asked.
“Not recently, I’m afraid,” said Benedict.
“What’s it been, months? Weeks?” prodded Trumaine.
“I believe Professor Jarva left Credence more than five years ago. It mustn’t be any later than that.”
“Five years is an awful lot of time,” grumbled Trumaine, then he went on. “As you might have also heard, the circumstances in which both Jarva and his wife were killed are, to put it mildly, odd. They were killed in a closed environment to which nobody seemingly had access—Jarva’s own bunker. As queer as this may sound, the murderer found a way to enter the sealed bunker, kill Jarva’s wife, let Jarva bleed to death, then vanish into thin air ...”
“I don’t see how I can be of any help, Detective,” pouted Benedict.
“I’d say it again, for clarity: when the Jarvas were being killed, the plate door to the bunker’s keep was shut,” repeated Trumaine.
Again, Benedict didn’t seem to get it.
“Isn’t this exactly what you do in here?” asked Trumaine. “I mean—flush things and people around different places, despite the void or any other objects that might be in the way?”
“Are you suggesting that the murderer had himself flushed in and out of the crime scene? Like a big spaceship?” Benedict didn’t laugh in Trumaine’s face, he just exhaled in a polite scoff of disbelief.
Trumaine studied Benedict’s eyes for a moment, then stepped to the window from where the fluctuating believers could be seen.
“Tell me, Mr. Benedict. Is there any way to change the feed before it is administered?”
“Clearly, you have no idea about what the feed is,” said Benedict. “What we call ‘the feed’ is an endless list of extremely detailed information. The feed includes the list of spaceships which are going to travel on a given day. Their destinations. The timetables for their arrival and for their departures. The names of the civilians bound to travel—in case of passenger transportation. The detailed list of the number, type and quality of the goods traveling—for cargo transports. The feed is compiled on a daily basis in the offices of the Transport Security Administration. The massive amount of information is then assembled in one large file. Five copies are published, each of them encrypted according to the highest standards of security. The copies are then locked into five different security cases, each one with its own access code. All the cases are then securely transported to the Federal Agency where they are once again verified and then released. One copy goes back to the Transport Security Administration for archiving. One copy is kept by the Federal Authority for archiving. One copy is sent to the mainframe for archiving. The last two copies are finally delivered to Credence and loaded into our computers. The computers work on their own. No one has access to them.”
Benedict made a long pause, waiting for his words to sink in. Trumaine might as well as be the smartest cop in town, but the proceedings were just as complicated.
“As you can see for yourself,” he went on, “there are simply too many redundant checks in all the various stages of the process to even remotely consider a change in the feed possible. No. I don’t think that’s what happened.”